


Spirits of Another Sort

by paintedrecs



Category: Gargoyles (Cartoon)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Fox/Xanatos, M/M, Owen POV, Pining, Post: Cloud Fathers, Timestamp, demiromantic Owen, polyamorous Xanatos, see end notes for details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24191638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: Owen shifted his chair a little closer and set his hands on the desk—one stone, one flesh, both clenched into fists that couldn’t betray his emotions. Reaching out to Xanatos in this moment would do nothing but push him away, making him close off before he’d said what was truly bothering him. Owen was patient. He’d had centuries to learn how to wait.
Relationships: Puck | Owen Burnett/David Xanatos
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33





	Spirits of Another Sort

**Author's Note:**

> Look, it's me with another timestamp fic. While [all my Gargoyles fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs/works?fandom_id=21566) thus far fit within the same "world" (canon compliant with the very plausible addition of romantic Owen/Xanatos), I don't think you need the context of the others to understand this one. There are a few details in the end notes just in case.
> 
> This time around, I couldn't get the implications of the Coyote episode out of my head. Xanatos, trapping a trickster, without Owen by his side...swiftly followed by the Oberon introduction, "Future Tense," and the Gathering. There's a LOT going on, and instead of writing meta about it I just...put all my feelings into a fic. That seems to be happening a lot with this fandom.
> 
> Title is, you guessed it, from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In the half-decade that Owen had been with Xanatos, he’d rarely seen him drunk. Even now, with a three-quarters-empty bottle of scotch at Xanatos’s elbow and the sharp scent of it seeping from his pores, it took Owen longer than it should have to register the rest: the slight blurring of Xanatos’s words, like his tongue was too thick for them; the odd clumsiness of his movements, his hand knocking against his glass twice before he could grasp it in unsteady fingers.

Most disturbingly, the way his eyes couldn’t—or wouldn’t—quite catch Owen’s.

“I take it the expedition to Flagstaff didn’t go as planned, sir?” Owen asked. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat across from Xanatos, choosing not to express more direct concern.

Xanatos filled his glass again, although he merely swirled the amber liquid, staring into it, before setting it aside.

“I had him, Owen,” he said, sounding tired and more defeated than Owen had thought him capable of. “Coyote—the _real_ Coyote. I was this close to accomplishing everything I’ve ever...”

He picked the glass up, then, and tilted it into his mouth; his aim was slightly off, but he didn’t seem to notice the thin stream that slipped past the corner of his lips and soaked into his beard.

Owen shifted his chair a little closer and set his hands on the desk—one stone, one flesh, both clenched into fists that couldn’t betray his emotions. Reaching out to Xanatos in this moment would do nothing but push him away, making him close off before he’d said what was truly bothering him. Owen was patient. He’d had centuries to learn how to wait.

“It’s unfortunate that the cauldron didn’t work,” he said, feeling his mouth flatten as he looked at the cold, immobile texture of the forearm he’d plunged into it. “I’d thought the iron, even when melted down and reforged, would be potent enough to hold him.”

“It was,” Xanatos said. He huffed out an annoyed breath, sounding a little more like himself again: momentarily thwarted, but never defeated. “Goliath showed up. With the Mazas.”

“Ah,” Owen said.

“ _Avalon_ ,” Xanatos said, making the word sound like a curse, as though he’d drawn the imprecation directly from Owen’s thoughts. “That goddamn epic quest of theirs, and I got to be the latest stop. What’s the point, Owen? Why would Avalon send them after me?”

Although his vowels were still unnaturally drawn out, his _s’s_ soft and slurred, his gaze sharpened as he looked up. His expression suddenly grew more intent, more familiar—more like the man Owen knew, who somehow always managed to turn setbacks into opportunities.

Owen allowed himself the luxury of staring directly into Xanatos’s eyes: as dark, as strikingly beautiful as ever, but bloodshot now, with a glossy sheen. “You know I can’t answer that, Mr. Xanatos,” he said, letting them both hear his regret in not being able to say—to _do_ —more.

Even like this, with alcohol loosening his inhibitions, Xanatos made no attempt to force a response Owen couldn’t give. Owen wondered sometimes how others, like the gargoyles or Detective Maza, couldn’t see what he had from the start: the soul of an honorable man, a rare human who was neither dull nor petty, who pursued his ambitions with relentless, single-minded intensity, but respected—even admired—those who could present a true challenge.

Xanatos never fumbled after revenge. Unlike others Owen had served—less willingly—he never indulged in cruelty for its own sake, or bolstered his feeble ego by grinding anyone who stood against him into dust.

He was a man who deserved every ounce of loyalty Owen had given him.

“Tricksters,” Xanatos mused, abruptly reaching forward to take Owen’s stone hand in both of his. He stroked his thumbs against the rough, unfeeling surface, hardly seeming to notice he was doing it. “If Goliath hadn’t interfered, I would’ve captured Coyote. So much effort, so much expense, to trap lightning in a bottle. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Sir?” Owen asked, not moving, not resisting Xanatos’s hands on him.

“Why did you let me catch you, Owen?”

Not startling at the question was one of the most difficult things Owen had done in recent memory. “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Xanatos,” he said, as Xanatos stroked up his arm, to the sharp line bisecting stone and all-too-human flesh. Owen’s skin reacted in ways he couldn’t control: goosebumps rising under the warm touch of Xanatos’s fingers, each hair standing on end. His traitorous body was reaching after Xanatos’s, in the only ways it could.

Xanatos didn’t seem to notice. He sighed, let go of Owen, and sat back in his chair. “I’ve spent years chasing elixirs, cauldrons, magic books, and supernaturally powered beings who everyone else thought were just...legends. Phantoms. Old wives’ tales.” He was struggling with the sibilance, still, but he scrunched his eyebrows, pressing the words out with visible effort. “And all along, I had you. The greatest trickster of them all.”

Owen drew his hands off the desk, into his lap, where he pressed his human fingers against the stone that held no memory of Xanatos’s warmth. “Are you regretting your decision, sir?”

Xanatos shook his head; tendrils of his dark hair were escaping from their elastic tie, framing his face and softening his chiseled features. “I’ll never regret you, Owen. But I don’t understand why you let me keep you.”

Owen truly had no response for that. He wasn’t hampered, now, by Oberon’s laws or the rules of Xanatos’s contract. He merely had no idea what to say.

“I’ve searched every inch of this world, and you’re the one who found me.” Xanatos wrapped both hands around his thick, squat glass and stared into the golden liquid like it held the answers he’d been seeking.

The silence stretched on for long enough that Owen assumed they were done, that Xanatos’s thoughts had moved along other paths. He scraped his chair back an inch, rebuttoning his jacket in preparation to stand; Xanatos lifted his face at the noise, his eyes still glassy, his mouth soft and sad.

“Do _you_ regret it, Owen?”

“Sir?” Owen asked again.

“You came to me as Puck, and you offered me your life and your loyalty. I know you thought I’d take the wish. I’d be immortal now, and you’d be free.”

The truth was stark, and difficult for both of them to accept. Owen drew in a quiet breath, willing his voice to retain its accustomed steadiness. Human bodies betrayed you, when you least expected it. Owen had long given up on reining in his emotions, but this he could still do.

“The choice was as much mine as it was yours,” he replied, pleased with how calm, how measured, the words sounded. “I wouldn’t have offered anything I wasn’t willing to give.”

“And what is it that you’re offering me now, Owen?”

Xanatos’s eyes were fixed on Owen’s—unwavering, with a power that Owen could feel down to his very bones. But he was still asking, not demanding. If Xanatos had made the slightest tug on the silken threads linking Owen to him, he would’ve sent Owen toppling to his knees. Weak, and wanting, and willing to do anything for him.

The bonds that held them together weren’t nearly as fixed as Xanatos seemed to believe. Puck had never formed a bargain he couldn’t wiggle out of, had never penned a contract without inserting dozens of hidden clauses in his favor. The cauldron had left a permanent imprint because he’d allowed it to. He stayed with Xanatos because...but that was an answer he couldn’t give. Not by the rules he’d set around his own heart, to guard it from further harm.

“You have my loyalty, Mr. Xanatos, for as long as we both live.” That part was simple, something they both knew. The rest was more difficult, less honest, but he managed to shape the necessary words, to open his heart beyond what it truly longed for. “I serve the Xanatos family. You, Fox, and the child you’ll have in less than a month.”

Xanatos sat up straighter, his eyes clearing a little, as though he’d almost forgotten why he’d been so determined to harness this particular trickster’s powers. He had more to consider now; not only his own future, but his family’s. “I’m going to be a father,” he said, in a tone that was equal parts terror and awe.

“Fox is, I believe, still awake, and waiting for you,” Owen said. He stood to his feet, flicking phantom dust off his suit, wondering how it was possible for something as intangible as language to leave bruises, to tear open wounds that never seemed to fully heal. “You should go to her.”

Xanatos grimaced into his glass, waving a hand at himself, at his unusual dishevelment. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”

 _Weak_ , he meant. Soaked in a pathetic array of emotions, thrown by a loss that’d shaken him more than he was ordinarily willing to show. Xanatos was used to weathering his internal storms alone; Owen understood, and had spent years learning when to step back, and when he’d be permitted entry.

But Fox was different. She was Xanatos’s wife, the soon-to-be mother of his child. His partner and equal—the love of his life, which Owen was doing everything he could to ensure would stretch on past the edges of eternity.

“She loves you,” Owen said. He stopped with his hand on the door, his back to Xanatos, his resolve still too permeable, too rocked by the desires that kept seeping into it, weakening its borders. “Loving someone means seeing them exactly as they are. You tie your lives together not because you’re searching for perfection, but because it’s the only choice you can make. The rest doesn’t matter. She won’t care that you lost Coyote. It’s you she cares about, Mr. Xanatos.”

“Owen,” Xanatos said, so softly that Owen turned, despite his better judgment. He should leave now—the first step in a more permanent departure, which was coming far too soon. No Child of Oberon could resist their lord and master’s call. He could already sense it tugging at the edges of his awareness, forcing him along a path he had no wish to tread.

Oberon’s voice was stronger. Xanatos’s was the one he could never bring himself to resist.

“Yes, sir?” he asked.

Xanatos had risen to his feet, unsteadily; he capped the bottle with some effort, seeming to realize he’d already had far too much to drink. Enough, Owen thought, that he might not even remember this conversation come morning.

“There’s something you haven’t been telling me,” Xanatos said, not moving towards him, but not needing to. The words alone held Owen in place. “You said I didn’t need you in Flagstaff, but that wasn’t true.”

There’d been a project at home that required his attention, Owen had said. He hadn’t told Xanatos the details. He wasn’t surprised that Xanatos had noticed that gap, when they’d spent years sharing everything.

Xanatos pushed the bottle aside, bracing himself against his desk, both palms flat against a surface that barely seemed sturdy enough to hold him. He shook his head; more of his hair pulled loose, falling into soft disarray that he didn't try to fix, to hide from view. He seemed to be battling with himself, but he finally let the next question spill across the distance separating them.

“Owen, I still have you, don’t I?”

The Gathering was inevitable, and approaching quickly. Owen could feel it, like ozone-thick air stinging his nostrils as lightning crackled on the horizon, the green-tinted sky warning of worse to come. There was no way to avoid this storm; if he hid, Oberon would find him. If he fled, Oberon would follow. If he fought...

But that wasn’t even an option.

There were rules that could simply never be broken, even by Puck. But he might be able to find a way to bend them. If he could get his hands on the Phoenix Gate...

“You have me, Mr. Xanatos,” Owen said, making a promise he’d do everything in his power to keep. He poured all his honesty into it, all his love, trusting that with the late hour and the nearly emptied bottle of scotch, Xanatos wouldn’t remember the details, or the way his voice nearly shook when he said, “You’ll always have me.”

Until the end of time—and beyond it, if such a thing were possible.

**Author's Note:**

> While it's not explicitly stated here, Owen is hardcore pining because (a) he's in love with Xanatos (b) they had a sexual relationship for two months while Fox was in jail, which Owen ended once she reunited with Xanatos (c) he's not aware yet that Xanatos & Fox have an open relationship, or that Xanatos is polyamorous and very much in love with him, too.
> 
> If you want the full context and the happy ending, you can check out my [Then Fate O’errules](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640824) series. It's complete at 30k and I'm not adding to it, but...I can't seem to resist these periodic episode timestamps, because I'm not done with the feels yet. (There might be one more coming. We'll see.)
> 
> Thank you for indulging me! I just really, really love this pairing. I thought I'd gotten it all out of my system after the _first_ fic, but here we are.


End file.
